It just goes further to prove that the ordinary US citizen faces an ever increasing burden of just figuring their yearly taxes. I have a Wharton MBA and in theory I should be able to figure them out, but it's a nightmare. I do them myself so that I will maintain some semblance of understanding them. Tim Geithner's problem does not surprise me in the least.

5:01 pm January 22, 2009

Hop wrote :

I have only a minor in Business and have been using mostly Turbo Tax for at least 29 years. For a while, I also computed my tax in a spread sheet until I finally realized that TTax didn't make mistakes. If you believe this man simply made a mistake, HOLD UP YOUR HAND!
In my not so humble opinion he did a great disservice by naming Turbo Tax. Shame, Shame, Shame!

6:13 pm January 22, 2009

Studio City CFO wrote :

If you follow the Turbo Tax interview and enter each box of your W-2, 1099s, etc., Turbo Tax will correctly compute your tax liability, including "self-employment" Social Security and Medicare taxes. First, Geithner blamed the IMF, then he essentially blamed TurboTax. Wrong on both counts, he cheated.

6:33 pm January 22, 2009

TaxLLM wrote :

Despite the fact that I have a master's degree in taxation, I also have a difficult time dealing with 1099 income and how to accurately calculate and report tax due. People with various degrees of tax system familiarity have difficulty with the 1099 income reporting system because the IRS makes it difficult by requiring you to use a crystal ball to accurately forcast for the coming 12 months exactly what your 1099 income will be and also what your taxable income will be. Taxable income is less the deductions and other credits you might claim or qualify for during the year. Who among us has the ability to know exactly what their taxable income for next year will be, and even how regular their 1099 income will be as distributed by quarter for the coming 12 months? Unless you know these things, it is very easy to underreport self-employment income.

6:53 pm January 22, 2009

Please! wrote :

He ignored the previous two years he owed after paying two years after being called on the carpet. Who's talking about forecasting? You get a 1099 misc or maybe the IMF doesn't issue a 1099 Misc (never having done international taxes), net of deductions and multiply by 15.2% roughly. Can't imagine Turbo Tax doesn't do that correctly. He's being given a pass. No one's talking about figuring out the estimated tax on future self employment each quarter. They're talking when the return was due. All depends whom you are and whom you know.

6:58 pm January 22, 2009

Rosie wrote :

This simply doesn't compute. I worked for a IFI (international financial institution) and used turbotax to file my returns. The organization provided us with clear instructions about computing self employment taxes and turbo tax did the rest. Failure to pay these taxes wasn't a simple mistake but rather a calculated risk that he wouldn't be caught and if he was, the penalty would be small.

7:00 pm January 22, 2009

Jon wrote :

"Studio City CFO" is wrong. Geithner, as an employee of an international organization, got a unique tax document - a W-2 for which no payroll taxes (employer or employee) were paid or withheld. Geithner's mistake was to enter the data into TurboTax as a W-2 (which correctly assessed his share of payroll taxes, but not the employer's). He should have ignored the label on the document and treated it as 1099. But who would have known to do this [except perhaps a Treasury Secretary]?

7:01 pm January 22, 2009

Michael from Fairbanks wrote :

There's nothing complicated about 1099 income--the guy just didn't want to pay his taxes. Only when the light came on did he come clean. If he was a Republican nominee he would've been crucified.

7:06 pm January 22, 2009

Not a 1099 issue wrote :

This sounded like an obscure tax issue - IMF doesn't pay or withhold FICA for US employees, so they need to pay SECA themselves. IMF employees were made aware of it, he signed the paperwork. I wouldn't expect TurboTax to account for this kind of scenario - was it even public knowledge before this? But Please! is right, he didn't pay the tax due for prior years after being nailed so no angel-wings for the new commander in chief of tax...hmmm. (TaxLLM - sounds like you're talking about making accurate or at least penalty free estimated tax payments, there's always the prior-year safe harbor. Schedule C isn't all that hard and the pro/sumer software does a pretty good job w/it).

7:09 pm January 22, 2009

Old Indie wrote :

Sorry, no Bush around to blame. Mr President, it is your responsibility to earn our trust. This is not a good start.

7:11 pm January 22, 2009

Les Bates wrote :

The political/ruling class gets another free pass--I doubt it would make a difference which party. If I make a mistake, the IRS does not just take the tax due and forgive the penalties. Giving him the benefit of doubt, if the guy cannot figure out where to put data in a menu driven software package or understand self employment income, how can he oversee the Treasury Department that administers the tax laws?

8:14 pm January 22, 2009

Stewart A. Levin wrote :

To clear up some misinformation, the IRS allows you to use the annualized method of computing income and deductions for determining how much quarterly estimated tax to pay. You don't need to know the future, just what you've done to date.

TurboTax does make mistakes, after all it is written by people, though rarely will they cause you grief. Last year I used TT to crosscheck my own figures and found that TT was incorrectly rounding some items. (You are supposed to add individual entries in schedules and then round the total.) The result was a buck or two discrepancy.

Even the Treasury Department makes mistakes on their 1099's. Last year they miscalculated OID on Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) by using the wrong starting CPI figure. (The used one for the following day, instead.)

8:35 pm January 22, 2009

JQP wrote :

I lean Democrat, and I second the comments here about the obvious and thoroughly embarrasing gaffe.

However, I will reserve my judgement based on his first 90 days...

11:26 pm January 22, 2009

cs wrote :

"... Bob Meighan, VP of TurboTax. Meighan, who is also a CPA, says he reviewed some of the information about Geithner’s situation and found his case to be truly “exceptional ...”

Would you explain why his case is exceptional?

12:05 am January 23, 2009

Mike wrote :

Even if Geithner's mistakes were honest mistakes you have to wonder why he didn't pay the back taxes for 2001 and 2002 until he thought he was going to be nominated. After the audit he paid what he had to pay but the statute of limitations had run out on the earlier years so he never would have paid the earlier years taxes if not for the PR issue. He's supposed to be "one of the smartest guys in the room".

12:10 pm January 23, 2009

Dennis Byron wrote :

Geithner's failure to use the very easy to use TT is not Bush's fault or Intuit's fault. It's clearly Sarah Palin's fault. If she hadn't been spending so much time looking out her window at Russia in 2001, we wouldn't need an International Monetary Fund.

1:45 pm January 23, 2009

Richard Thomas wrote :

Some of the commenters here seem not to recognize that a person can be an employee and receive a W-2, yet have to pay SECA taxes on the same income that is reported on that W-2. It is not only true of IMF employees. It is also true of ordained ministers. I'm a volunteer church treasurer. The tax code requires that I prepare a W-2 for the ordained minister, but the boxes labeled "Social Security wages" and "Medicare wages" are to be left blank, which was also the case on Mr. Geithner's W-2. The tax code, by a special definition, makes the income in Box 1 on the W-2, "Wages," subject to SECA taxes but not subject to FICA taxes. Like the IMF, we also pay the minister what would normally be the employer's half of the FICA taxes. Unlike FICA taxes though, this allowance must be included in the income reported in Box 1 of the W-2 and is itself subject to both income taxes and the SECA tax. Mr. Geithner's self-employment tax allowance was also itself subject to both income and SECA taxes. It's all in Section 1402 of the tax code. IMF employees are in 1402(c)(2)(C) and ordained ministers in 1402(e). The U. S. tax code may be humankind's most ingenious invention. Neither Mr. Geithner nor our minister receive a 1099 showing the income on which SECA taxes are due, but I prepare a piece of paper for the minister since other provisions in the tax code cause the SECA taxable income of ministers to be greater than the reportable income for income tax purposes on the W-2. At least Mr. Geithner didn't have that problem.

12:29 am September 29, 2009

Dirk van Ulden wrote :

At first I was laughing at our Teasury Secretary's excuse but now that I have become a victim of the Intuit Turbo Tax black box myself, I have a bit more sympathy. I never heard whether Mr. Geithner ever received restitution from a clearly inept software vendor. Would Mr. Geithner care to respond?

Empaths are loving, caring, kind people who want to help others. They are often found doing volunteer work and may serve others through emotionally-demanding careers as childcare givers, medical professionals, hospice workers, midwives, and such. Most empaths came in with a mission to heal people, animals, plants, and the planet. As healers, many have taken on so much external energy that they spend most of their time trying to clear unwanted energy and recuperate from the last episode that "blew their doors off."Here are a few characteristics of empaths who have not learned to filter out other people's emotions or manage their own energy:
You constantly feel overwhelmed with emotions and you may cry a lot, feel sad, angry, or depressed for no good reason. You may be tempted to think you are crazy for having random mood swings and bouts of unexplained fatigue. If you are a woman, it's like having PMS all the time! Unrestrained empathy can cause a person to manifest symptoms similar to bipolar (manic-depressive) disorder.
You drop by the store feeling great, but once you get in a crowd you start feeling down, angry, sad, or overwhelmed. You feel you must be coming down with somtehing so you decide to go home and rest.
If you've found that you can't be in public without becoming overwhelmed you may start to live the life of a hermit. But, even at home, you get depressed when you watch the news and you cry while watching a movie. You feel horrible when a commercial for the Humane Society shows animals that need a home. You may rescue more animasl than you can possibly care for.
You feel sorry for people no matter who they are or what they have done. You feel the need to stop and help anyone in your path. You can't pass by a homeless person without giving him money-even if you don't have it to spare.
Many empaths are overweight. When they absorb stressful emotions, it can trigger panic attacks, depression as well as food, sex, and drug binges. Some may overeat to cope with emotional stress or use their body weight as a shield or buffer. In Chapter 9 of Yvonne Perry's book, she shows how to use light as protection.
Most empaths have the ability to physically and emotionally heal others by drawing the pain or ailment out of the sick person and into their own bodies. For obvious reasons, this is not recommended unless you know how to keep from becoming ill in the process.
From chest pains and stomach cramps to migraines and fever, you manifest symptoms without contracting an actual illness. Later, you learn that your "ailment" coincided with the onset of a friend or family member's illness.
No one can lie to you because you can see through their faade and know what they really mean. You may even know whythey lied.
People-even strangers-open up and start volunteering their personal informatio. You may be sitting in the waiting room minding your own business and waiting your turn when the person next to you starts sharing all kinds of personal information. You didn't ask them to and thye never considered that you might not want to hear about their drama. People may feel better after speaking with you, but you end up feeling worse because they have transferred their emotional pain to you.
Some empaths don't do well with intimate relationships. Constantly taking on their partner's pain and emotions, they may easily get their feelings hurt, desire to spend time alone rather than with the partner, feel vulnerable when having sex, and feel that they have to continually retrieve their own energy when it gets jumbled with that of their partner. They may be so afraid of becmoing engulfed by another person that they close up emotionally just to survive.
The ill, the suffering, and those with weak boundaries are drawn to the unconditional understanding and compassion an emptah emits without even being aware of it. Until you learn how to shut out the energy of others, you may hve a pretty miserable existence in which you feel like you have to be entirely alone in order to survive.
It's easy to see why being an empath is often very draining. No wonder that over time, some folks shut down their empathic ability. And, with that, they also shut eown a vital part of their divine guidance system. Laern how to manage the amount of info-energy you receive and hear more of what is really important.

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